With the failure of mediation to break the impasse in negotiations to end the 2012 NHL Lockout, attention now has turned to an NHL proposal that players and owners meet without input from the league or union leadership. While the proposal would likely favour the league – after all, it pits players against more experienced and (generally) more educated owners – there is at least one intriguing angle from the players’ perspective: a chance to talk to owners with the greatest interest in ending the lockout.

New York Rangers star Henrik Lundqvist made the attraction of that evident in comments on twitter on Friday:

If the plan is to have meetings between players and owners to solve this mess, maybe it’s time to..

The comments were re-tweeted by, among others, Lundqvist’s New York teammate Michael Del Zotto and Rangers beat reporter Larry Brooks, who has been a strong voice in support of the NHLPA both in this labour dispute and during the 2005 NHL Lockout.

While the risks are obvious, various members of the NHLPA have repeatedly voiced a belief that certain NHL owners – specifically the owners of profitable, big money teams like the New York Rangers – have been shutout of negotiations because their interests are best served by a quick deal with the players. In the case of the Rangers specifically, owner James Dolan has had repeated run-ins with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman in the past; in 2008 the team actually sued the NHL for autonomy in running its own website but quickly backed off after the league reciprocated by threatening to take ownership of the club away from Dolan.

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